The Boy in the River by Richard Hoskins Page B

have helped matters along, though I had the sense not to say that to Sue.
    ‘That’s precisely why we have to go home,’she said.
    The next day we lifted off in the Cessna with Dan once again at the controls. Normally so affable, he avoided looking at us directly, as if what he saw in our eyes was too painful to handle. I stared out over the canopy as the tiny plane banked. The endless forest stretched below with the silver river winding through it. Already the tiny green strip had been swallowed up. Bolobo itself had disappeared from view.
    The contrast could not have been more extreme. The Baptist Church found us a pebble-dashed semi-detached in Sidcup, in London’s south-eastern suburbs. And there we lived for six months or so, in a strange limbo, with no work and no particular view of the future; not quite able to believe that we were back in London, not quite sure why we were there. At first I spent the time idling, thinking of the past, wandering the grey suburban streets, staring at the television.
    I cried a great deal. I had never been a particularly tearful type, but now I was overcome at unexpected moments. These bouts of emotion were like ripples spreading out from that dreadful afternoon in Bolobo. I had no control over them and made no effort to exert any. I didn’t care what anyone thought. I was aware that Sue, now close to giving birth again, wanted and needed my support, but I had very little to give her. In its absence she got on with life, and managed it a good deal more stoically than I did.
    She found me one day, kneeling on the living-room carpet with a pile of newspapers and a pair of scissors in front of me. Gently, she asked me what I was doing.
    I couldn’t meet her eyes. I was cutting out the pictures of children who had been hurt or abused in some way. ‘I just thought I’d light a candle for them, that’s all,’ I explained.
    ‘Abigail’s gone, you know, Richard,’ she said sadly. ‘It’s going to be best for both of us if you accept it.’
    I didn’t answer and after a while she quietly left the room.
    Perhaps Sue called the Church in an effort to help me, or perhaps they decided to act on their own initiative, for at about this time a young man I didn’t recognize appeared at our front door. It was a late summer afternoon and I had been lounging on the sofa, watching the Test match. Cricket was one of the few things that brought me relief at the time. I loved the order of it, the esoteric rules and rituals, its very Englishness. So I pulled the front door open rather grumpily when the bell rang, resenting the intrusion.
    ‘Richard Hoskins? I’m Pete Swaffham, from the Church.’ He held out his hand and I took it reluctantly. He had an open, friendly face. ‘I’m here to see if I can be of any use to you.’
    ‘Of use to me?’ There was a ripple of applause from the TV and I glanced over my shoulder towards the living room, impatient to get back to the match.
    ‘I’m here if you’d like to talk through any . . . issues. Obviously you’ve had a very bad time in Africa and it usually helps to talk.’
    ‘I don’t even know you.’
    ‘It can be especially helpful to talk to a stranger, Richard. Neither of us can bring any baggage to the discussion, can we?’
    I looked at him and the irritation must have been apparent in my face. I didn’t need counselling, I thought, and he was interrupting my cricket. But he stood his ground and in the end I was not quite far enough gone to shut the door in his face.
    ‘Listen,’ I said at last. ‘I’ve spent three and a half years in the middle of bloody nowhere and this is the first chance I’ve had to watch a Test match. So if you want to do your Samaritans bit you’ll have to sit through the cricket first, OK?’
    He smiled broadly. ‘Sounds fair enough.’
    And to his credit he came in and sat beside me in the sitting room for a good hour. We swapped occasional comments about the state of the pitch and the English